The primary focus of this PhD dissertation is an eye-tracking experiment
examining target-user performance on so-called dual-entry modes representing
Danish taxation terminology, to determine whether terminological ontologies
should be included in the user interface. The conventional concept-oriented
articles of term banks, which describe the meaning of a term by means of text, are
combined with concept-oriented diagrams, which represent the meaning of a term
by means of a terminological ontology displaying the underlying concepts,
relations and characteristics. The latter provides the target users with overview and
allows for the inference of consistent definitions, which in principle should benefit
the target user.

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A Cross-sector Study of Financial Service Companies and Manufacturing Companies

Sanden, Guro Refsum(Frederiksberg, 2015)

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Resume:

Situated at the intersection of sociolinguistics and international business and management studies, this
PhD project focuses on language management in two different industry sectors, namely the financial
service sector and the manufacturing sector. Employing a multiple case study design consisting of two
matched pair cases, the study examines the means by which language is managed, i.e. language
management tools, in the two financial service companies Nordea and Saxo Bank and the two
manufacturing companies Grundfos and ECCO. The contribution of the thesis lies in capturing the effect
of industry sectors on corporate language management – a level of analysis which has largely been
overlooked in previous research.
The findings indicate that industry sectors embody great explanatory power with regard to the
selection of language management tools at company level. The financial service companies and the
manufacturing companies were found to have three sector-level factors in common, though with
somewhat different outcomes. Economic geography increases the use of English for corporate level
functions in the two financial service companies owing to the companies’ presence in international
financial centres. On the other hand, in the two manufacturing companies, this factor increases the need
for multiple corporate languages and translation into the mother tongue spoken by the production
workers in the industrial locations where English language skills tend to be scarce. In manufacturing,
economic geography was also found to lead to the use of language intermediates as mediums of
communication. In all case companies, global integration increases cross-border communication and the
use of English for corporate level functions, which also increases selective recruitment of English-skilled
employees in both sectors. Industry speak is found to be closely related to company-specific language in
all case companies regardless of sector, and technological solutions are implemented in order to manage
large term databases in both sectors.

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Effective communication requires texts to be organised into a coherent discourse structure. But
languages vary considerably in how they do this, posing a challenge for effective intercultural
communication. Instead of relying on our own preferred persuasion style to be the most
effective, we need to take into consideration that people with different linguistic and cultural
backgrounds do not necessarily employ the same linguistic means in similar communication
situations. This is of particular importance in a business context, and a profound understanding
of cross-linguistic differences in the organisation of argumentative texts is needed.
In order to address this challenge, this thesis presents a study of structural characteristics in
argumentative texts across three different languages. The aim of the study is to examine some of
the linguistic means that writers of different languages employ when creating persuasive
discourses. The study is based on 150 Danish, English and Italian speeches held by Members of
the European Parliament in their native language.
The linguistic means under investigation are conceptualised as belonging to three different
structural domains which account for different ways of linking discourse units in a text: a
syntactically organised text structure, a rhetorically organised discourse structure and an
information packaging organised information structure. The structural domains are defined from
a cognitive-functional perspective and juxtaposed into a single analytical framework.
The analyses show that writers across the three languages generally use the same rhetorical
relations to build up persuasive discourses. But the analyses also reveal that the Danish, English
and Italian writers textualise relations differently. The Danish writers use almost exclusively
finite verb forms in coordinate and subordinate structures. The English writers tend to avoid
explicating the rhetorical relations between discourse units, and the Italian writers tend to
include more units inside the same sentence than the Danish and English writers.
The analyses also suggest that the cross-linguistic differences in textualisation can be
correlated with certain persuasive strategies. The Danish writers tend to persuade by analogy,
making use of typical features from narratives. The English writers make use of presentational
persuasion style, involving themselves in a more personal way than the Danish and Italian
writers. And lastly, the Italian writers make use of typical features from quasilogical persuasion
style, adopting a formal register and argumentation.
This thesis formulates an analytical framework for a systematic investigation of the structure
of discourse across languages, pairing theories and methods from the two parallel disciplines of
linguistics and rhetoric in order to gain more insights into effective intercultural communication.

In this thesis I investigate the understanding and use of the English emotion words guilty, ashamed,
and proud by Japanese and Chinese speakers of English as a lingua franca. By exploring empirical
data I examine (1) how Japanese and Chinese participants understand and use the three stimulus
words, (2) if their understanding and use differ from that of native English speakers, and (3) if so,
what these differences are.
In the thesis 65 participants are investigated. The participants consist of 20 native Japanese and 23
native Chinese. For comparison, a group of 22 British native English speakers is also investigated.
The study is theoretically and conceptually founded in the literature of the interplay between
language, culture, and thought, and draws on notions from the fields of cross-cultural semantics and
emotions. As existing methods are not adequate for the purpose of the thesis, a new methodological
framework is created. The design of the framework is based on features from existing methods used
for testing language association, and methods for testing the universality of emotions and their
expressions. Models for exploring cultural semantics are also used as inspiration. The framework,
which is based on the theoretical notion of the word as an image-idea pair as suggested by the
theory of linguistic supertypes, consists of three tests each addressing three different aspects of the
understanding and use of the stimulus words: the Free Association test (FA test), the Context Bound
Association test (CBA test), and the Picture Driven Association test (PDA test).